TEEE 4106

PRINCIPLES OF MAINTENANCE
ENGINEERING
Brief Course Description
The course introduces basic concepts of maintenance engineering.
Course Objectives
The course aims at providing students with
• The principles and concepts of maintenance engineering
• knowledge and skills in maintenance economics and management
• knowledge of maintenance management tools and computer aided
Maintenance.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this course, the students should be able to:
• Use computer aided maintenance and maintenance management
tools in electrical engineering.
• Apply maintenance management and economics of maintenance in
electrical engineering.
Course Description
• Introduction of maintenance
• Maintenance Management
• Economics of Maintenance
• Maintenance Management Tools
• Computer aided maintenance
• Safety during Operation and Maintenance
 INTRODUCTION
• There is an increased awareness in use of modern and sophisticated
tools for the engineering analysis of the industry.
• One among the areas of attention is Maintenance Engineering.
• Maintenance Engineering is the discipline and profession of applying
engineering concepts to the optimization of equipment, procedures,
and departmental budgets to achieve better maintainability,
reliability, and availability of equipment.
• Maintenance engineering uses engineering theories and practices to plan and implement
routine maintenance of equipment and machinery.
• This must be done in conjunction with optimizing operating procedures and budgets to
attain and sustain the highest levels of reliability and profit.
• Maintenance engineers are often required to have knowledge of many types of
equipment and machinery. A person working in the field of maintenance engineering
must have in-depth knowledge of or experience in basic equipment operation, logistics,
probability, and statistics.
• Experience in the operation and maintenance of machinery specific to a company's
particular business is also frequently required.
• Since the position normally requires oral and written communications with various
levels of personnel, excellent interpersonal communication and participatory
management skills are also desirable.
• Maintenance engineering positions require planning and implementing routine and
preventive maintenance programs.
• In addition, regular monitoring of equipment is required to visually detect faults and
impending equipment or production failures before they occur.
• These positions may also require observing and overseeing repairs and maintenance
performed by outside vendors and contractors. In a production or manufacturing
environment, good maintenance engineering is necessary for smooth and safe daily plant
operations.
• Maintenance engineers not only monitor the existing systems and equipment, they also
recommend improved systems and help decide when systems are outdated and in need
of replacement. Such a position often involves exchanging ideas and information with
other maintenance engineers, production managers, and manufacturing systems
engineers.
• Maintenance engineering not only requires engineers to monitor large production
machine operations and heavy duty equipment, but also often requires involvement with
computer operations.
• Maintenance engineers may have to deal with everything from PCs, routers, servers, and
software to more complex issues like local and off-site networks, configuration systems,
end user support, and scheduled upgrades. Supervision of technical personnel may also
be required.
• Good maintenance engineering is vital to the success of any manufacturing or processing
operation, regardless of size. The maintenance engineer is responsible for the efficiency
of daily operations and for discovering and solving any operational problems in the plant.
Maintenance
Definition:- a routine and recurring activity of keeping a
particular machine or facility at its normal operating condition
so that it can deliver its expected performance or service
without causing any loss of time on account of accidental
damage or breakdown.
• Once equipment is designed, fabricated and installed, the operational
availability of the same is looked after by the maintenance requirement.
The idea of maintenance is very old and was introduced along with
inception of the machine. In the early days, a machine was used as long as
it worked. When it stopped working, it was either repaired/serviced or
discarded.
• The high cost sophisticated machines need to be properly
maintained/serviced during their entire life cycle for maximizing their
availability. The development of mechanization and automation of
production systems and associated equipment, with the accompanying
development of ancillary services and safety requirements, has made it
mandatory for engineers to think about proper maintenance of equipment.
• Maintenance function also involves looking after the safety aspects of
certain equipment where the failure of component may cause a major
accident. For example, a poorly maintained pressure vessel such as steam
boiler may cause a serious accident.
Objectives of maintenance
• The objectives of maintenance should be formulated within the framework
of the overall organizational setup so that finally the goals of the
organization are accomplished. For this, the maintenance division needs to
ensure that:
a) The machinery and/or facilities are always in an optimum working condition at the
lowest possible cost
b) The time schedule of delivering to the customers is not affected because of non -
availability of machinery /service in working condition
c) The performance of the machinery /facility is dependable and reliable.
d) The performance of the machinery /facility is kept to minimum to the event of the
breakdown
e) The maintenance cost is properly monitored to control overhead costs.
f) The life of equipment is prolonged while maintaining the acceptable level of
performance to avoid unnecessary replacements.
• Maintenance is also related with profitability through equipment output
and its running cost. Maintenance work enhances the equipment
performance level and its availability in optimum working condition but
adds to its running cost.
• Maintenance work should be to strike a balance between the availability
and the overall running costs.

• The most important objective of maintenance is the maximization of

availability of equipment and facilities so as to help in achieving the
ultimate goals of the organisation, to achieve minimum breakdown, and to
keep the plant in good working condition at the lowest possible cost over a
stipulated time period such that the minimum standard of performance
and safety of personnel and machines are not sacrificed.
• Separate departments are formed in industrial organizations to look
after the maintenance requirements of equipment and machines.
 Effects of maintenance
• Maintenance, being an important function in any production system, has far
reaching effects on the system.
I. If the right practice of maintenance is not established for a particular environment, it may lead to
serious problem of either over maintenance or under maintenance. The selection of a particular
maintenance policy is also governed by the past history of the equipment. Cost effective maintenance
will help in enhancing productivity. It is therefore important for the team associated with maintenance
work, to know how much to maintain.

II. The nature of the maintenance function affects the life of equipment. It is known from experience
that optimum maintenance will prolong the life of the equipment, and on the other hand,
carelessness in maintenance would lead to reduced life of the equipment and in some cases an early
iii. failure as well.

Further, proper maintenance will help to achieve the production targets. If the availability of the
equipment in good working condition is high, the reliability of the production will also be high.
 Effects of maintenance cont’d
iv. Another important effect of the maintenance function is the
working environment. If the equipment is in good working
condition, the operator feels comfortable to use it otherwise there
is a tendency to let the equipment deteriorate further.

v. To get the desired results in maintenance operations, there

should be selective development of skilled, semiskilled, and
unskilled labour.

vi. And also proper job description is required for the jobs in order to
make full use of skilled workforce available.
Principles of Maintenance
Maintenance principles are followed in a system to guide the staff to work efficiently and effectively
to achieve the overall objectives of the maintenance system.
i. Plant Management in Maintenance work: The main role of the maintenance function is to
provide safe and effective operation of the equipment to achieve the desired targets on time
with economic usage of resource.
ii. Production and Maintenance objectives: The plant operation is driven by the production
targets. The objective of maintenance function is to support these targets. The achievement of
desired goals of the production system is to be supported by both the production and
maintenance department to ensure smooth and successful operation of the industry.
iii. Establishment of Work order and Recording system: The maintenance system should have
proper work order and recording system. The work order for the maintenance function
indicates the nature of work to be performed and the series of operations to be followed to
execute a particular job. It is necessary to maintain proper records and entries to monitor the
maintenance functions. This record is useful in formulating the future maintenance plans and
scheduling to meet the desired objectives of the organization.
iv. Information Based Decision Making: The maintenance objectives are successfully achieved
by the use of reliable information system. This information is used to meet the manpower and spare
parts requirements of the industry.
v. Adherence to Planned Maintenance Strategy: A sound maintenance management should
adhere to the planned maintenance strategy. This also includes the use of manufacturer’s
information on the life and maintenance schedules of the equipment and other materials.
vi. Planning of Maintenance Functions: All the maintenance functions are to be carefully
executed by a way of proper planning to ensure the effective utilization of manpower and materials.
vii. Manpower for Maintenance: The manpower requirements of the maintenance system
must be carefully evaluated based on the time and motion study. The requirements should also
satisfy the need arising in cases of overhauls, component replacement, emergency and unscheduled
repairs.
viii. Workforce Control: Determination of exact workforce required to meet the maintenance
objectives of the system is a difficult task due to the element of uncertainty. Hence the proper
control and monitoring of workforce needs to be ensured.
ix. Role of Spare Parts: A good maintenance management system requires appropriate tools.
So the system should have good quality tools and that are available in required quantities to ensure
the proper functioning of the maintenance works.
x. Training of the Maintenance Workforce: Training of the workforce must be integral part of
any good maintenance management system. Training helps the workforce to learn about the
modern techniques, recent trends in maintenance, knowledge of sophisticated instruments and to
chalk out a strategy to meet the growing demands of the industry.
Types of maintenance systems
• Maintenance can be divided into two broad categories: unplanned and planned. The figure below provides an
overview.
Maintenance

Planned Unplanned
Maintenance Maintenance
(Proactive) (Reactive)

Emergency Breakdown

Predictive Preventive Improvement Corrective

Maintenance Maintenance Maintenance Maintenance

Statistical- Condition- Engineering

based based Design-out Deferred Remedial
services

Shutdown Shutdown Shutdown

Window Running Routine Opportunity
preventive improvement corrective
• In unplanned maintenance there is no organised arrangement to follow and
everything is carried out as a reaction to a situation, possibly resulting in
prolonged breakdowns, frustration and loss of control.
• Unplanned maintenance suggests that the building operator takes no
responsibility for the failure of the engineering services and the inevitable
consequences. It could put building operators at risk of not meeting their
statutory requirements and is not recommended as a technique to be adopted.
It is, therefore, not considered further.
➢ Breakdown Maintenance: – Repair is undertaken only after failure of system.
Equipment is allowed to run till it fails. Lubricating and minor adjustments are
done during the period.
❑ Applicable in small factories where equipment are very small and doesn’t use special tools
❑ Isn’t suitable for big industries
➢ Emergency maintenance:- It is carried out as fast as possible in order to bring
a failed machine or facility to a safe and operationally efficient condition.
Limitations of unplanned maintenance:
a) Most repairs are poorly planned due to time constraint caused by
production and plant management. This will cost three to four times than
the same repair when it is well planned.
b) This approach focuses only on repair of the symptoms of failure and not
on the root cause of failure. This results only in increase in the frequency
of repair and correspondingly the maintenance costs.
• Planned maintenance is organised, controlled and follows a
recognisable procedure. This type of maintenance is carried out with
forethought control and the use of records to a predetermined plan.
It can take several forms, such as:
➢ Preventive Maintenance:
o The maintenance carried out at predetermined intervals or corresponding to
prescribed criteria and intended to reduce the probability of failure or the
performance degradation of an item.
o A maintenance program which is committed to the elimination or prevention
of corrective and breakdown maintenance.
o Designed for day to day maintenance like cleaning, inspection, lubricating,
retightening etc. to retain the healthy condition of equipments.
Steps for establishing a Preventive Maintenance (PM) program
• There are a number of steps involved in developing a PM program.
The figure presents six steps for establishing a highly effective PM
program in a short period.

Schedule Expand to
Identify and Establish Prepare the the PM the PM
choose the Identify the assignment assignments
PM program as
areas PM needs frequency assignments on annual necessary
basis

Figure: Six steps for developing a PM program

Each step is discussed below:
1. Identify and choose the areas:
• Identify and select one or two important areas to concentrate the initial PM
effort. These areas should be crucial to the success of overall plant operations
and may be experiencing a high degree of maintenance actions. The main
objective of this step is to obtain immediate results in highly visible areas, as well
as to win concerned management support.
2. Identify the PM needs:
• Define the PM requirements. Then, establish a schedule of two types of tasks:
daily PM inspections and periodic PM assignments. The daily PM inspections
could be conducted by either maintenance or production personnel. An example
of a daily PM inspection is to check the waste water settle-able solids
concentration. Periodic PM assignments usually are performed by the
maintenance workers. Examples of such assignments are replacing throwaway
filters, replacing drive belts, and cleaning steam traps and permanent filters.
3. Establish assignment frequency:
• Establish the frequency of the assignments. This involves reviewing the
equipment condition and records. Normally, the basis for establishing the
frequency is the experience of those familiar with the equipment and the
recommendations of vendors and engineering. It must be remembered that
vendor recommendations are generally based on the typical usage of items under
consideration.
4. Prepare the PM assignments:
• Daily and periodic assignments are identified and described in detail, then
submitted for approval.
5. Schedule the PM assignments on annual basis:
• The defined PM assignments are scheduled on the basis of a twelve-month
period.
6. Expand the PM program as necessary:
• After the implementation of all PM daily inspections and periodic assignments in
the initially selected areas, the PM can be expanded to other areas. Experience
gained from the pilot PM projects is instrumental to expanding the program.
• Benefits of Preventive Maintenance:
i. In general the cost incurred towards breakdown maintenance is usually
higher than the cost incurred on preventive maintenance.
ii. Less energy consumption for your assets and equipment due to high levels
of operational efficiency, which will reduce your utility bills.
iii. Prolongs the effective life of the equipment - so you’ll spend fewer dollars
in the long run.
iv. Detects the problem at earlier stages.
v. Ensures all equipment and employees work only during scheduled hours,
eliminating the need for paying overtime due to unexpected machinery
breakdowns, etc.
vi. Significantly reduces unplanned downtime - will decrease business
downtime and closures due to unexpected equipment failures.
Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance
There are a few drawbacks to regular preventive maintenance which include:
i. Budget constraints and considerations - which may not be able to support all
relevant preventive maintenance procedures and inspections that ideally need
implementation;
ii. Time-consuming scheduling and inspections - which may not be feasible given
the volume of customers, responsibilities, etc. on any given day;
iii. Staff time and resources - which may mean that certain employees work
overtime, or are taken away from their daily duties in order to focus on
preventive maintenance practices;
iv. Overkill of preventive maintenance - which can lead to unnecessary money
spent on precautions that aren’t needed.
v. Requires planning - especially if you’re just starting out with a brand new
preventive maintenance program and there are no pre-existing statistics and
records to work with. Proper planning is crucial to implement an effective
preventive maintenance program, which will ultimately take time.
Preventive Maintenance can be further sub-divided into:
➢ Opportunity maintenance: work done as and when possible within
the limits of operational demand.
▪ In multi component system with several failing components, often it is
advantageous to follow opportunistic maintenance.
▪ When an equipment or system is taken down for maintenance of one or
few worn out components, the opportunistic maintenance can be utilized
for maintaining or changing other worn out components, even though they
are not failed.
▪ It is actually not a specific maintenance system, but its a system of utilizing an
opportunity which may come up any time.
➢ Routine maintenance : which includes those maintenance activities that
are repetitive and periodic in nature such as lubrication, cleaning, and
small adjustment.
➢ Running maintenance: which includes those maintenance activities that
are carried out while the machine or equipment is running and they
represent those activities that are performed before the actual preventive
maintenance activities take place.
➢ Window maintenance: which is a set of activities that are carried out
when a machine or equipment is not required for a definite period of time.
➢ Shutdown preventive maintenance: which is a set of preventive
maintenance activities that are carried out when the production line is in
total stoppage situation.
 ➢ Predictive maintenance
o This is a set of activities that detect changes in the physical condition of
equipment (signs of failure) in order to carry out the appropriate
maintenance work for maximising the service life of equipment without
increasing the risk of failure.
o It is classified into two kinds according to the methods of detecting the signs
of failure:
– Condition-based predictive maintenance
– Statistical-based predictive maintenance
o Condition-based predictive maintenance depends on continuous or periodic
condition monitoring equipment to detect the signs of failure.
o Statistical-based predictive maintenance depends on statistical data from the
meticulous recording of the stoppages of the in-plant items and components
in order to develop models for predicting failures.

Sensitivity: Public
• Condition-based maintenance is used for work initiated by trends
highlighted by routine or continuous monitoring of the condition of
plant, such as general performance or specific parameters.
• The various techniques of condition-based maintenance include:
i. Vibration Monitoring –determines the actual condition of equipments /
machines by studying the noise or vibration produced during functioning.
ii. Thermography –determines the condition of plant machinery systems etc
by studying the emission of infra red energy ie temperature.
iii. Tribology –determines the dynamic condition of bearing lubrication, rotor
support structure of machinery etc by adopting any one of the techniques
like lubricating oil analysis, spectrographic analysis, ferrography and wear
particle analysis.
iv. Electrical Motor Analysis –determines the problem within motors and
other electrical equipments.
v. Visual inspection -determines the conditions of working elements visually
based on the experience.
Benefits of condition based maintenance
1. Safety:
• The injury and fatal accidents can possibly be reduced by adopting the safety
measures in equipment and system. So, the condition based maintenance
enables the system by indicating the future failure in the form of giving signal to
the operator.
2. Extended useful life:
• The continuous monitoring enables the system to avoid sudden failures which are
unscheduled. It extends the life of the equipment considerably.
3. Enhanced availability:
• The breakdowns are minimized through proper maintenance which leads to
increase in the availability. It is achieved by reducing the down time.
4. Reduction in maintenance time:
• The repair time and fault correction time can be reduced by condition based
maintenance.
5. Improved output:
• The output of the process is directly linked with the availability, enabled life of the
equipment, and reduced maintenance time. The condition based maintenance
improves these three factors which lead to improve the quality of products.
6. Quality product:
• The better quality products could be ensured through condition based maintenance
with healthy equipment in the process line. The quality of the products will satisfy the
customer expectation.
7. Improved reliability:
• Since the condition monitoring can predict the possible failures, it is possible to
remove or replace a piece of equipment before any serious consequences arise and
hence, the reliability of the equipment can be improved.
8. Improved planning:
• Condition monitoring also helps in improving maintenance and production planning.
This is due to the fact that the ability to predict the onset of failure ensures that the
organisation of materials and staffing can be carried out in advance, and fitted into any
existing schedules. The reduction in unexpected failures should reduce the need to
reschedule or cancel the existing work.
• The drawback of predictive maintenance is that it depends heavily on
information and the correct interpretation of the information.

• Some researchers classified predictive maintenance as a type of preventive

maintenance.

• The main difference between preventive maintenance and predictive

maintenance is that predictive maintenance monitors the condition of
machines or equipment to determine the actual mean time to failure whereas
preventive maintenance depends on industrial average life statistics.
➢ Improvement Maintenance consists of:
• Design-out maintenance is a set of activities that are used to
eliminate the cause of maintenance, simplify maintenance tasks, or
raise machine performance from the maintenance point of view by
redesigning those machines and facilities which are vulnerable to
frequent occurrence of failure and their long term repair or
replacement cost. It is very expensive.
• Engineering services which includes construction and construction
modification, removal and installation, and rearrangement of
facilities.
• Shutdown improvement maintenance which is a set of improvement
maintenance activities that are performed while the production line is
in a complete stoppage situation.
➢ Corrective Maintenance
Corrective Maintenance is the program focused on regular planned tasks that
will maintain, correct or restore a failed unit. The effectiveness of this program
is judged on the cycle cost of critical equipment rather than on how quickly the
broken machines are restored to working conditions. It is proactive approach
towards maintenance management.
• The main objectives of this program are to
i. Eliminate breakdowns
ii. Eliminate deviations from optimum operating conditions.
iii. Eliminate unnecessary repairs.
iv. Optimize all critical plant systems.
• As per this program, all the repairs are well planned and implemented by
properly trained people and the equipment or system is verified and returned to
service.
Corrective maintenance is usually carried out in four steps :
• 1st step : collection of data, information and Analysis
• 2nd step : identifying the causes
• 3rd step : find out the best possible solution to illuminate likely
causes
• 4th step : Implement those solutions
 • Prerequisites of Corrective Maintenance:
i. Existence of trained full time maintenance planners for accurate
identification of roof cause of all incipient problems.
ii. Properly trained craftsmen with necessary skill to complete the repair of
each incipient problem.
iii. Standard maintenance procedure for recurring repairs and maintenance
task.
iv. Allowing sufficient time to maintenance amidst tight production schedules
and management constraints.
v. A thorough verification process to ensure the completion of repair.
 ➢ REALIBILITY CENTERED MAINTENANCE (RCM)
• Based on the operational requirements of specific plant in relation to known
reliability information.
• It is one of the well-established systematic and a step by step instructional tool
for selecting applicable and appropriate maintenance operation types.
• It helps in how to analyse all failure modes in a system and define how to prevent
or find those failures early. The rough process of a RCM is as follows:
➢ Target products or systems of maintenance should be clearly identified, and
necessary data should be collected.
➢ All possible failures and their effect on target produced or systems are
systematically analysed.
➢ Selection of operations (preventive or corrective) is done based on rational
calculation of effectiveness of such operations for achieving required
maintenance quality, such as reliability, cost etc.
• Applications of Reliability Centered Maintenance:
➢ When designing, selecting and installing new systems in a plant.

➢ When setting up preventive maintenance for complex equipment and

systems for which we are not clear on how they work.

➢ When teaching people the basics of reliability it helps to explain the matters

in a detailed fashion using RCM.

Challenges in Maintenance
• The maintenance function of a modern industry faces a number of
challenges attributable to:
➢ Rapid growth of technology resulting in current technology becoming
obsolete. Such a challenge is a frequent one in Information and
Communications Technology (ICT) industry where computers and
computers based system (hardware and Software) is the main
component.
➢ Advent of new advanced diagnostic tools, rapid repair systems, etc.
➢ Advance store management techniques to incorporate modular
technologies.
➢ Requirements of keeping both outdated and modern machines in
service. For example, many industrial organizations have a
combination of the old machines working on obsolete technology and
new systems utilizing the latest technology and equipment.
➢ The effective management of maintenance aspects under such
challenging circumstances is often a difficult job.
➢Besides the rectification of the faults in the equipment, the
activities of the maintenance department include:
➢ Upgradation of the existing plants and equipments and training
maintenance personnel to attend the required technical skills.
➢ Effective maintenance of the old equipment for higher availability
➢ Cost optimization of all maintenance functions
➢ Improvement of maintenance activities in the areas of tribology and
terotechnology
➢ Reconditioning of used /unserviceable spare parts.
➢ Development of indigenous sources for parts for import substitution
➢ Setting up of an effective maintenance information management
systems (MIMS).
➢ Effective utilization of the maintenance workforce
➢ Setting up of in house R&D activities for effecting improvements in
maintenance practices.